I Swear

by Vincent Guy

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

The culture of swearing has changed radically within my lifetime. I was just 21, with a fairly humble job in theatre, when I found myself guarding the door against a mob of marauding paparazzi. They were intent on getting at Kenneth Tynan, the theatre critic, who had just uttered the F-word on television for the first time in history. These days, while a new puritanism seems to be affecting young people’s actual behaviour, their speech is peppered with the F-word even without any provocation.

Nonetheless, euphemisms abound, described in academic terms as "semantic bleaching”: “Golly, Gosh, Lawks, Frigging, Rear, Oh Dear.”

“Sugar” as a euphemism for “Shit” I find especially twee. “Shoot” is another, popular mainly in the US, but at least that has a strong consonant at the end. And in fact the etymology of “Shoot” and “Shit” is the same: a separation, a parting of the ways.

I’ve racked my brains to find the actual word for the room where we urinate and defecate. “Gents/Ladies” sorts out who’s going to which one, but not what they do there. “Toilet” is a place for adjusting make-up and clothing. “Lavatory” is a place to wash yourself. “WC” describes the flushing mechanism but not the thing which is flushed.  Well, there is “Urinal” but that’s only the half of it and seldom used (the word, I mean).

An American comedian’s line from long ago comes to mind revealing the absurdity of semantic bleaching, “Hey, man, your dog’s just been to the bathroom on the sidewalk”.

A recent arrival is the use of “Poo” in scientific contexts, at least where scientists are speaking to the lay public; the US variant is “Poop”. It’s a twee, nursery word when there are inoffensive terms that say what’s what: excrement, faeces. Please, let’s call a spade a spade.

Looking at a shelf in a bookshop recently I see half a dozen books with titles including “SH*T”. Most were aimed at self-improvement on the lines of “Let’s sort your SH*T”. I find this annoying, trying to catch attention through shock while at the same time self-censoring.

A recent trend heard on the streets is compression. “Fucking” is largely swallowed, glottally-stopped, squashed into half a syllable, emerging as “ ‘in’ ”. Used about three times per sentence. This seems not so much euphemism as revealing a need to swear so often that there isn’t time to utter the word in full.

But take care: ‘the science’ indicates that if you swear too much it will lose its magical power. An experiment on TV involved performers Bryan Blessed and Stephen Fry with buckets of iced water. Blessed uses swear words all the time, and loud; Fry seldom does so.  The issue was: how far does swearing help in the relief of pain? Do strong words lose their strength if overused? Both men plunged their hands into a bucket of iced water and proceeded to swear away. Fry significantly outlasted his companion. The conclusion was that Blessed had eroded the power of his curses by overuse over many years; Fry’s mouthings still retained their full anaesthetic effect. It was far from a rigorous trial but suggested that further research is required, perhaps a large-scale, double f-ing and blinding test

To swear an oath is to make a solemn promise as in a court of law or a marriage ceremony. It’s also to speak in a filthy, aggressive manner which shouldn’t be done in front of the children. It’s like the word ‘drug’ which can be a life-saving miracle of medical science or a forbidden black-market substance which will pretty soon kill you.

“Bloody” is now falling out of fashion, or has it just lost its power? Supposedly a shortening of “By our lady”, which seems to me doubtful.  Other suggestions are that it comes from “ ’Sblood”, short for “God’s blood”, morphed into an adverb/adjective. “Doggone” is perhaps a soft distortion of “Goddamn”. This style has long roots. As a boy I read many a tale of those bold knights of old using terms like “Zounds” for “God‘s wounds” and “Odds bodikins” for “God‘s body”. But I’m not sure that Richard the Lionheart and his crew really spoke like that. The only one that just about survives is “ ‘Struth, God’s truth”, expressing surprise - I can’t believe it.

The phrase “Swear like a trooper” suggests cussing is prevalent among the lower ranks of the armed forces. Rather like tattooing which used to be a sign that a man had been a sailor, probably including the South Seas in his travels. Now everybody does it. My bar-room research reveals there is also fertile ground for the F-word in the offshore oil industry, another predominantly male community working under isolation and stress. The C-word is widely used there even as an affectionate term for a male friend (see Spanish below).

The approach to strong language varies widely over space as well as time. They certainly order some things oddly in France. They use a word for the female private parts to describe someone who is not very bright; it’s not strong at all, carrying about the same weight as “daft” in British English. Another French oddity: if I want a French girl to give me a kiss, I must ask for “Une bise”, a diminutive of the word I learned at school, “Un baiser”. This latter has now come to refer to the act of full sexual congress and is definitely on the taboo list. Not used to express annoyance, just a dark term for copulation.  To tell someone in strong terms to go away, the French return to their version of the F-word, “Fou-moi le camp”.

The French are famous for their hundreds of cheeses, love of butter and excellent entrecôte. The cow, “la vache”, is central to their civilisation. Odd then that they use “La vache” as a mild expletive. “Vachement” as a modifying adverb, as in “C’est vachement bon!”, is widespread even in the most sophisticated circles.

 “Une pute" is the word for prostitute, (“sex worker” in modern cleansed English). By extension it might refer to a slut or loose woman. “Putain”, on the other hand, doesn’t describe a person but is simply an all-purpose swear word: adjective, adverb, noun, exclamation, whatever your fancy. You’ll see it translated in movie subtitles to the English F gerund.

Meanwhile in Spain, the C-word is an expression of friendship, equivalent to something like “Pal” or “Mate” in English. Wandering in Spain in my 20s I had an induction course in strong language from a bunch of young lads. The strongest insult they coached me in I will give to the reader in Spanish: ”Me cago en la leche de la madre que te parió.” You can translate it for yourself online. It’s an unpleasant idea but, apart from the word for defecating, “Cago”, it’s all expressed in decent everyday language. A brief variation on the same theme, “Ay, Leche!“, is frequently used; not to attack but to express frustration, something like the British“Oh bother”.

“Caramba” is a softening of the strong word for the male organ, “Carajo”, which also has a stronger sound. Remember that in Spain the letter J is pronounced gutturally, KH, like the Scots CH in “loch”. My impression is that “Caramba” is not used that much by Spanish speakers. It’s more like stage-Spanish, what foreigners imagine. Indicative of this is that it’s a catch phrase in The Simpsons.

“Cornuto il clero!” An Italian acquaintance who took delight in strong language had this favourite to express frustration. Does it mean “May the clergy be cuckolded” or “Things are a mess because they’ve been cuckolded”? Given the official celibacy of the Roman Catholic priesthood a hint of self-contradiction, of impossibility, gives it special piquancy.

I’m told that the Chinese and Urdu communities in the UK lack obscene vocabulary and, while speaking their own language, have to pepper it with English swear words. More research needed.

Meanwhile, the Germans seem to leave sex out of the business altogether. Their expressions of impatience or anger all relate to activity, or lack of it, in the defecation department. “Das ist mir scheiss-egal” would translate mildly as “It’s all the same to me”, literally “For me it’s all shit-equal.” A famous literary quotation comes from Goethe‘s account of a Renaissance warrior. When cornered by the Kaiser’s forces he simply says “Er kann mich im Arsche lecken!” Mozart even wrote a Canon for six voices using similar words, listed as Kirchel 382c in the catalogue. Have a listen.

My main focus here has been on sexual and lavatorial obscenities. I have scarcely mentioned any current blasphemies. The injunction against “taking the Lord’s name in vain” is one of the Ten Commandments. These days, however, such is the prevalence of “Oh God/ Oh my God/ Christ/ Jesus”, as well as the more coy “Oh my” or “O.M.G.”, that one scarcely registers them.

Profanities have lost almost all their power, just as obscenities are losing theirs. Will strong language just be weak?  Fear not; you may have noticed a creeping invasion of asterisks into such words as “Su*cide” or “K*ll”.  Maybe new taboos will step forward to protect us against bowls of painfully icy water.